The Hope of Humanity In relation To Promise

Hope. Four words but deep. We are wired to hope, since the very beginning of our childhood. We hope we can eat our favorite chocolate without being scolded by our parents. We hope our teacher cancel the exam, or at least make the questions less difficult. We are all people of hope, the "Hope-talk" dominated in our talk daily. Hope is a quality that animal does not have. Animal can desire but never could they hope, for hope is the product of the future yet animals, life in the realm of present. 

I can even says, hope is the very ingredient that help the most for the survival of human race. Take away hope from someone life, what's left is only death and despair. Not just religious people discussed about it, as they bring the jargon "eschatology" in the arena, philosopher and humanist also exercising hope, that in future, the world will be better, through their philosophy. People like Marx, Lenin and Engels propose their dialectical materialism and their typical form of communism, hoping that the world to be better place (without the concept of absolutes) as Donald Walters mentioned, "to resolved for all time the struggle between moneyed capital and the starving proletariat".

However, there is an interesting voice from Satre. He says that humanity need to learn to live without hope, that's the sign of wise man. What does he mean when he says that? How can humanity live without hope, since hoping is the existential mode of living, the natural consequences of being human? I myself agree with Ernst Bloch that hope is the basic principle, the source that move all actions and human existence. Hope itself is the "fabric of our soul", says Gabriel Marcel even more profoundly. So how can we understand Satre's word?  Apparently in this case, Satre does not deny the fact that humanity are wired to hope, it just that why bother with hope if at the end life is meaningless? His word really make sense.

If there is no survival after death, the small hopes that we make is at the end, are meaningless as well. Satre goes on to say that hope, is then a "hopeless passion" in other word, humanity are hoping because they are affirming that life has no meaning at all. To hope is indispensable but is is useless and redundant. If there is no hope at at all, why bother hoping? He is right. If life is meaningless at the end, perhaps it is no use to life with hope but life in despair. Philosophically speaking it is consistent but practically it's insane! Albert Camus best deduce the consequences of Satre's philosophy, that is to commit suicide. Why not just ended our life now instead of later? there is no such much difference and perhaps even worst, for the longer we life, the longer the suffering we experienced in this word.

There are two respond we might think regarding Satre's word. First, he is honest. Second, he is shallow. The first one can be right if only life is really meaningless. There is no objective meaning can be given except the one we created subjectively, which still at the end is absurd. To asked what is the meaning of life is category mistake, like asking what's the color of Beethoven Symphony no 5. If life has no meaning, questioning the meaning or about meaning itself is a fallacious action

However, if life is without meaning, to live a life without hope as Satre suggests is actually at best, can be stated as subjective preference and something that we should not take seriously. Moreover, I think, the more vital issue is not whether he is honest or not but whether this attitude is can be livable or not as Enstein conclude aptly that a man who regard life as meaningless hardly "fit" for life, since all humanity in general has a will to meaning, which best expressed through the means of hope. This fact is proven more when man close to death. They will start to hope out of fear.

So here, perhaps Satre is shallow. I dare not to claimed that Satre is sick as Freud once says, those who claim life is without meaning is sick or mentally ill. Or they are maybe infected by some kind of worry like what Paul Tillich might elaborate as a phenomena of the "anxiety of meaninglessness". Hence, for those who are radically anxious in life, up to a certain point in life, they can maybe just conclude that life is without meaning to justify their anxiety is real and not delusional. 

Is this is what happened in Satre's psychology? Was his conclusion derived from his uttermost anxiety? This is not my take on him. I argue, the reason why Satre can says that it is not because he is anxious or sick but it's a logical outworking of his philosophy that has dennied that God exits. If God does not exits of course, there is no objective meaning whatsoever can be established. We are alone in this cosmos, waiting our time to be doomed whilst we seen the others have gone first every moment. No solution can be given, even hoping is useless existential action of humanity. The only rational choice is to end life or perhaps if we are afraid to do so, we can delay the time by philosophizing a bit deeper, what is the meaning of the meaning of life so that so, we could at least at least life a so called, "responsible life" before we are doomed into nothingness for the ancient adage echoes, "unexamined life is not worth living." Maybe, the exploration of this very fact of nothingness is the only worth to be done in this world although the conclusion is the same, death. No "happy ending" only "dark ending".

If Satre sees that life is meaningless and hence, we should stop on hoping because it is unnecessary and only confirming their hopelessness, I am venture to question his thought and come to a different conclusion from what Satre had proposed. Why human are able to hoping in the first place? For me hope is not sign of meaninglessness, the useless passion of man but it is the sign that there is a promise has been given in history, hence we are long to see its fulfillment. The promise are written in every heart of human being, that is why they can sense it. And more clear, the promise is written in the sacred revelation of the Scripture and in embodied in history, in the person of Christ. 

Christ has died to fulfill the promise of God in the past, and now he is risen and he promise to return again. That is why human are wired to hope because we are longing to the fulfillment of the promise.Although Satre can easily reject this narration, and says that's only a fairy tale and myth. Yet, he cannot deny the possibility of hope in relation to promise, from which the Christian framework of hope made of. When his lover, Simone De Beauvoir make a promise, I dare to bet that he Himself exercise hope, a deep longing to see the promise fulfilled. So in the same way, in the Christian worldview, we hope because existentially, we are longing to see the fulfillment of God had who made the promise in the past. That's a rational possibility, despite the further debate we can bring, which beyond the scope of this topic, (Does God who has given the promise exists). To conclude, Hope is the existential respond of man toward the promise of divine. And the relation between hope and promise is the miniature of something grandeur, the ultimate reason of why human being are hoping throughout century. And as we look at the testimony of the Sacred Scripture of Christian faith, yes indeed, God has made promise in the ancient past and now, through Christ Jesus.